1613188 - Firefox printing cannnot render the contents correctly on NYTimes Chinese

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Print Preview, defect, P2)

Description

[ynotswim]

Attachment: BadFirefoxPrintingResults.pdf

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start Firefox in safe-mode.
2. Go to https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20200204/china-coronavirus-beijing/
3. Go to File->print preview.

Actual results:

The results are not getting the correct contents no matter in portrait, landscape etc. Much of the texts in the article are missing from the preview.

Expected results:

Should have all the texts of the article in the preview and actual printing pdf. The bug report only allows me to attached one file, so I cannot attach the correct printed PDF by Microsoft Edge for comparison.

Comment 1

[ynotswim]

Attachment: SamePagePrintedFromMicrosoftEdge.pdf

Attached the correct results from Edge.

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Looks like flexbox fragmentation issue.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

I am wondering if this persistent issue is ever going to be fixed? Whatever is causing FF to leave off the majority of a webpage's content when printing is affecting more websites than I can count, and the problem is not getting better with time, it is getting worse. It used to be that multiple pages of missing content would only happen with a few websites, but now it is happening with the majority of the websites I visit. FF is fine for viewing the web content, but if I want to print the webpage or save it as a pdf, that's where FF consistently fails. FF typically only gives me the first page or two and the last page or two of a website and nothing in the middle. I have to use Safari for the majority of my pdfs and print jobs now because of FF's inability to fully reproduce the content of most webpages.

I realize my comment is not helpful, but I wanted to validate this user's experience and confirm that this is indicative of a widespread issue which seems to be eluding FF for years in terms of a fix. If I had to file a bug report for every single webpage I encounter where FF cannot correctly reproduce the content when printing or saving it as a pdf, I would be at it all day and night. I have filed so many individual bug reports to alert FF each time I encounter the issue on a website that it was becoming a part-time job so I stopped. Now I just switch to Safari which ALWAYS reproduces the content of webpages properly and continue my work. Which is a shame, because I prefer Firefox to Safari generally speaking, but enough is enough already. There has to be a way for FF to figure out why this is happening with SO MANY websites. Thank you.

Comment 4

[Sean Voisen (:svoisen)]

Hi youngjane1118 — Thank you for your comment. We are actively working on bug 939897 right now. Once that bug is fixed, then this will be resolved and I hope the issues you've historically had with printing will go away :)

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(The relevant element in the page here is a <div class="row"> that wraps most of the page content here and has display:flex. If I use devtools to remove display:flex from that element, then I get many pages in print-preview (as expected) instead of just a few. So, this is indeed bug 939897.)

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Sean Voisen (:svoisen) from comment #4)

Hi youngjane1118 — Thank you for your comment. We are actively working on bug 939897 right now. Once that bug is fixed, then this will be resolved and I hope the issues you've historically had with printing will go away :)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 939897 ***

Hallelujah! Thank you for this very good news! Once they correct the new bug that popped up in FF 73 where all pdfs are now being saved as "untitled" instead of autofilling with the proper title of the document, my productivity will return to normal levels! (Bugs 1617922 and 1606512) Workarounds take time, but I am appreciative and thankful that the FF team is aware, responsive, and working hard to identify and solve glitches that arise. Thank you again for the great news!

Comment 7

[Ting-Yu Lin [:TYLin] (PDT, UTC-7)]

The NY Times article can be print without data loss in Firefox Nightly (2020-05-13). Though the printing result isn't good by my testing. It's the site's issue. For example, some position:fixed box at the bottom repeat itself at every page). The English version of the article prints better.

Comment 8

[ynotswim]

Attachment: Printed by Firefox 78.0a1 (2020-05-14) (64-bit) for the same page

The same URL still cannot print properly in the Nightly build I tested 78.0a1 (2020-05-14) (64-bit). An easy test can simply open https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20200204/china-coronavirus-beijing/ in Microsoft Edge and right click on Print. Note that this URL just one of the millions of web site that Firefox have been having problem to print for years! I don't think this printing quality can be marked as "Fixed" when the text is shift and some text is missing from the frame and some annoying footers on each page (please don't blame on a web site's design). If a browser can render it, if Microsoft can print it, so should Firefox.

Comment 9

[ynotswim]

Attachment: msEdgePrinted.pdf

Comment 10

[Ting-Yu Lin [:TYLin] (PDT, UTC-7)]

The same URL still cannot print properly in the Nightly build I tested 78.0a1 (2020-05-14) (64-bit). An easy test can simply open https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20200204/china-coronavirus-beijing/ in Microsoft Edge and right click on Print. Note that this URL just one of the millions of web site that Firefox have been having problem to print for years! I don't think this printing quality can be marked as "Fixed" when the text is shift and some text is missing from the frame and some annoying footers on each page (please don't blame on a web site's design). If a browser can render it, if Microsoft can print it, so should Firefox.

I agree that Firefox can do better to print this page.

Note that the footer has position:fixed, and the spec requires that we replicate it on every page: "... is replicated on every page when it is paginated."

Comment 11

[ynotswim]

79.0 seems improved the rendering the printing, although it's not perfect for some pages, but most of the pages I spot checked looked okay as long as the contents go. So I am gonna close this bug.

Comment 12

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks for letting us know!

Updating resolution to WORKSFORME, which is what we use for situations like this where something was previously broken and then gets better for unknown reasons.